Project, Nuclear Fuel Safety

KBS—See Nuclear Fuel Safety Project Kinetics, first-order Pu(IV)... 

The Nuclear Fuel Safety Project (Karnbranslesakerhet, KBS) was started in December 1976 with the purpose of studying all important aspects of waste disposal in Sweden. Two different alternatives for final storage of HLW and SUF, respectively, have so far been suggested and studied in detail by KBS Q). Some data for these two concepts are given in Table I and in Figure 1. 

The Nuclear Fuel Safety Project (Karnbranslesakerhet, KBS), Pack, S-102 40 Stockholm, Sweden, has so far presented the studies on waste storage in two main reports ... 

These reports are based on 120 technical reports (here denoted by KBS TR) on different technical aspects of waste treatment and ground disposal. More than 70 university departments and consulting companies in Sweden and abroad have been engaged in the preparation of these reports. The research on storage of radioactive waste in the ground is still in progress, both within the Nuclear Fuel Safety Project but also within a Swedish-American joint project between Swedish Nuclear Fuel Supply Co(Svensk Karnbranslefdrsorjning AB, SKBF), Fack, S-10240 Stockholm, Sweden, and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Earth Science Division, University of California, Berkeley. 

Handling of Spent Nuclear Fuel and Final Storage of Vitrified High Level Waste," Technical Reports by the Swedish Nuclear Fuel Safety Project (KBS),1978. 

In 1976 the Swedish government stipulated that no new nuclear reactors should be charged until it had been shown how the radioactive waste products could be taken care of in an "absolutely safe manner" (8). Consequently, the nuclear power industry (through their joint Nuclear Fuel Supply Co, SKBF) embarked on a program referred to as the Nuclear Fuel Safety (KBS) Project (8). In one of the schemes (9) a repository for spent nuclear fuel elements in envisaged at a depth of 500 m in granitic bedrock. The repository will ultimately contain 6000 tonnes of uranium and 45 tonnes of plutonium. The spent fuel elements will be stored in copper cylinders (0.8 m in diameter and 4.7 m in length) with a wall thickness of 200 mm the void will be filled with lead. 

The goal of this project is to identify specific auxiliary equipment that would increase the cost effectiveness and safety of spent nuclear fuel handling and transport. A Concept Level Proposals has been completed and approved by the AMEC Principals, but funding has not been identified for this project. 

Ignatiev, C., Pankratov, D., Toshinskiy G., et al. (2004) Nuclear and Radiation Safety during Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage of Land-based Stands Prototypes of Naval Liquid-metal Coolant Power Reactor Installations - Final Report under the ISTC Project 2710p between the Russian Research Center Institute for Physics and Power Engineering (RRC IPPE) and the Brookhaven National Laboratory of the US Department of Energy, Obninsk (in Russian). 

The following organisations are gratefully acknowledged for their financial support (alphabetical order) the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission the Commissariat a I Energie Atomique the European Commission through the BENCHPAR project under Contract FIKW-CT-2000-00066 the Institut de Radioprotection et de Surete Nucleaire the Japan Nuclear Fuel Cycle Development Institute, the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate. 

The DECOY ALEX project is an international co-operative project, initiated by SKI, the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, to support the development of mathematical models of coupled THM processes in the host rock for potential nuclear fuel waste repositories. The DECOY ALEX project has been running for more than a decade the third phase of DECOY ALEX called DECOY ALEX III is now being finalized with two main objectives. The first objective is the validation of codes by simulating large-scale experiments. The second objective is to determine the relevance of THM processes on the safety of a repository. To achieve the second objective, benchmark tests are proposed, where typical repository designs, engineered barriers and host rocks are examined. The benchmark problem called BMTl defined in this paper looks at the implications of coupled THM processes on the near-field performance of a repository. The performance of a nuclear waste repository is dependent on two main components ... 

JNC, H12 Project to Establish the Scienti.c and Technical Basis for HLW Disposal in Japan, Supporting Report 3 Safety Assessment of Geological Disposal System, Japan Nuclear Fuel Cycle Development Institute, Tokyo, 2000. 

The European participants were questioned as to how they could be involved in a bilateral nuclear materials safety program. They had stated the proposed nuclear materials safety interactions would be beneficial to them. The most obvious contributions were that the Europeans could host site visits and tours in their operating plutonium facilities and discuss the safety systems and methods of actual operating plants. They could also support the attendance of their experts at future meetings on nuclear materials safety. It was suggested that the French-German-Russian trilateral mixed oxide fuel (MOX) project could be used as a possible way to initiate and involve the United States and remaining European parties. 

Advanced the state of scientific knowledge and technology to enable incorporation of improved proliferation resistance, safety and economics in the design and development of advanced reactor and nuclear fuel systems through the award of ten new R D projects. 

To expedite the development of standards and advance good practices in the application of nuclear criticality safety in fuel cycle fadUties. the NRC has funded a number of researdi projects. These included a project for the development and publication of the Nuclear Safety Giiide, development of a better understanding of neutron interaction between storage and processing units in a nuclear fuel facility, and the development of a standard for the administrative practices in nuclear criticality safety. 

The first authorisation step pmsuant to the Finnish nuclear legislation is Government s Decision in Principle (DiP). In the DiP, the political and local acceptance for the nuclear project is requested and it is also crucial to siting the proposed nuclear facility. Posiva submitted its DiP application for building a spent fuel disposal facility at Olkiluoto in 1999. After STUK s positive safety appraisal, the proposed host municipality approved the application and the Finnish Government made the DiP in late 2000. Finally, the Parliament almost imanimously endorsed the DiP half a year later. 

The CAREM project involves technological and engineering solutions, as well as several innovative design features that have been properly proved during the design phase. Within CAREM project, the effort was focused mainly on the nuclear island (inside containment and safety systems) where several innovative design solutions require developments. This comprises mainly the reactor core cooling system, the reactor core and fuel assembly, the reactor pressure vessel internals and the hydraulic control rod drive mechanisms. 

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